Ridiculous invention - how to make it work?

[Gladwin]

Would it be possible to make a conveyor belt made of, or covered by ice? The reason I ask is that it would be cool to have ice skating treadmill in your basement.

Assume cost is no object -- i.e. you are making it for Shaquille O'Neal or Bill Gates.

Possible methods:

1. Large rotating cylinder cover in ice
2. Large rotating disk covered in ice
3. Conventional conveyor belt covered in ice, with the ice being instantly frozen
and melted onto the conveyor.
4. Segmented rectangles, with the segments attached to the moving conveyor.
(made either of ice or plastic)
5. Nordic track type of machine that simulates the skating motion
6. Wear inline skates on a treadmill


***edited to add number four ***
***edited again to add everyone's good ideas***

 

[Retro2001]

frozen water is fairly stiff and will crack when bent, so any coated belt is out of the question, unless the belt is cold enough and the strait part is long enough that a new layer of water could be applied and frozen each time around. Also, for a rotating cylender do have a shallow enough curve would have to be so large that it would be impractical.

Peace,
Will

 

[Retro2001]

Actually, the large rotating disk has merrit. If the disk were large enough, it could work. The skater would not be skating in a straight line though, and would have to skate at an angle to counter act the curvature of the disk.

 

[Gladwin]

If the ice isn't made of water, it could be more flexible. That sounds insane, hmmrph.

 

[Gladwin]

Hmm, I wonder what the sideways force would have to be to prevent you from falling off the disk.

 

[Degenerate]

The most pratical one i can think of is a farly large tredmill which allows the ice to be removed and put on on a continous cycle. This way, the runner geets new ice all the time. But, it may requrie some power to get the ice to form quickly.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

A belt could work if you utilized the latest in state of the art Zamboni technology.

 

[CTho9305]

<< A belt could work if you utilized the latest in state of the art Zamboni technology. >>




you could probably do a treadmill with a heater in the back and a lot of peltiers or a big compressor at the front... but that would use LOTS of energy.

 

[BeeMojo]

If cost is no object, yes.

They are even making a similar thing for skiing, a large disk on an angle so you can downhill forever. Part of the disk is passes into a refrigerated area, and refreshes the snow.

They could do a similar thing for ice, but the size would be the factor.

 

[Turkey]

How about this: instead of blades, we could put like, 4 smallish wheels on the sole of the skate, and then we could use any hard non-slick surface to skate on. Maybe they could even do it outdoors! I bet it'd be a huge hit! We could even rename it and make it like a separate sport, something like inline-skate rolling or blade-rolling .

Actually I think the most promising method would be a belt made of a suitable material... there is a skiing machine made basically of carpet that works on the same principle. Alternatively, there could be a nordic-track like machine that allows you to move like you're skating. If you're married to the ice idea then the disk seems to be the best way, but the question is: if you have a disk of a certain size, what's the advantage of putting it on a motor and rotating it? IE why not just skate around the fixed disk?

So I would say (assuming you had to have ice) that you could keep a reservoir of super-cooled liquid (like freezing rain before it hits the ground) near the treadmill-like machine. The treadmill-like machine would have a belt that was kept at a temp below freezing. As the belt passes the forward belt-wheel (on the flat part), the super-cooled water is sprayed onto the belt, instantly creating a thin (or possibly thick) layer of ice on the belt that the skater can skate on. When the belt passes over the rear belt-wheel, it cracks off/gets scraped off back into the reservoir where it melts/becomes supercooled again.

 

[Yossarian451]

Yes it would be techinically possible to make something like what you are thinking of just in a different manner. You could try just making it out of a spinning disk, imagine a really big cd coated in ice with you on top get yourself enough momentum you could stay on, but if it went too fast centrifical force would launch you off but you could counteract that with movement.

 

[VTHodge]

This stuff would be a much better solution. SuperIce is supposed to be surprisingly close to the real thing. Some NHL players have used it for rehab and offseason training. I would think the joints could be reworked somehow to be able to make a (large) belt. It is very important that the connection between plates would be very smooth (this applies even more to #4 above.).

Something that needs to be kept in mind is that flash freezing water (case #3) would not result in smooth, easy-skating ice. Hockey ice is produced with great difficulty and tightly controlled processes.

The best overall solution that I can think of is having two long plates of artificial ice, set up in a nordic trac style configuration. When one skate is lifted off of its plate, it quickly slides forward. It would be important that the plate would continue to slide backwards while the skater is in the "glide" part of each stride.

All interesting ideas.

 

[Gladwin]

Superice sounds promising, but it would have to be the segmented conveyor wouldn't it?

I'm racking my brain for a material that is flexible (not resistant to shear) and yet is very hard. Usually, it seems like the materials hardness also implies that the material is brittle.